One of the Big Decisions we made upon embarking on this whole reproduction thing was to consider moving out of our beloved San Francisco TimeCube to a house in Oakland. We've lived in this apartment for two and a half years and it's been a joy the entire time. Deciding to move was based on a number of factors, but it really boils down to:
1. We live in a giant cube, meaning,
2. We have no doors except on the bathroom, meaning,
3. Post-kid we would never have houseguests ever again ever, nor could we isolate loud adults/sleeping child or loud child/sleeping adults if necessary.
Supporting factors: the school where I work - and where the child care will eventually be - is in Oakland, as are many many of our friends (including several with their own babies). On top of that, we calculated that a nice house would cost us the same (or less) rent as our apartment here in the city.
We had very high standards in our search: besides a few random wants like a gas stove and washer and dryer hookup, we needed at least three bedrooms (see: having guests ever again), a cat-friendly place, and a yard with good sun for me to garden in. In a nice house that we liked. All within a search radius that included a scant two or three sub-neighborhoods within Oakland (Rockridge, Temescal, and the area near Piedmont Avenue). Hey, I'm NOT living somewhere that walking to excellent food is not an option.
Given those constraints, we expected it might take several months to find a place. Although we decided not to go visit places until after the holidays, we'd been looking at craigslist ads almost daily since we found out about the pregnancy in October. We'd seen promising things, but nothing that lept out at us. Nevertheless, we began hunting in earnest a week ago today.
Imagine our surprise when the second place we saw was, well, it.
Utterly unlike anything else we'd seen advertised (or even really heard about), we knew immediately that we wanted this house. We applied nearly on the spot (actually following the listing agent to her next open house and giving it to her there, 20 minutes later), were approved last Sunday, and signed papers last Monday. We move officially February 6th. Ack!
It's hard to explain in words exactly why it's so epic-great. It's big and rambling, three floors and long and skinny. With lots of corners. And angles. And unexpected doors that lead to things like a bizarre ladder/stairway to an unfinished loft looming over a bedroom. It theoretically has six bedrooms (well, technically four; two are "bonus rooms" in the finished loft upstairs that lack closets), but we'll probably only use two of them as proper bedrooms. The others will be project space (OMG SO MUCH PROJECT SPACE), a library/TV room, storage, and some guest space. After living in a giant open cube, this is going to require a lot of re-planning in how we tend to use space, but we've been fantasizing about walls for at least the last year. I'd say we're ready for it.
The other huge huge plus of the house is the yard. The house is set back from the street (very unusual for this area), so 100% of the yard is in front. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures looking out of the house's front door towards the street, but it's currently a delightful, mostly-blank canvas on which I've been given carte blanche to do what I like. In fact, I think that my master gardener trainee status was part of what made us the winning applicants.
It's going to be a delightful, but difficult challenge. The exposure is good; fortunately the house faces south. I predict that those pine trees - awesome though they are! - will likely drive me to distraction with acidic needle dropping and roots invading vegetable beds. The bark chips are laid on thick and what soil I could unearth was INCREDIBLY hard and compacted. Next week in master gardener class we're doing soil analysis and were specifically instructed to bring a bag of soil to play with, so I'll get to see in more detail what I'm working with.
I admit, I'm already thinking about the raised beds with integrated drip irrigation I want to con Colin into building for me. I suspect that'll be the easiest way to go for vegetables, to start. That's my first priority. After that point, I can start thinking about the succulents and drought-tolerant natives to fill in the rest of the yard.
Though I guess the really tricky part will be doing as much of this hard work as possible in the next couple of months, before my range of motion gets necessarily limited!
